Innovation without Borders: Building a Culture of Trust and Creativity in Global Teams

For teams responsible for driving growth and innovation within a global, decentralized, and multicultural organization this brings unique challenges. Building relationships in a global team can be tricky with fewer face-to-face meetings and diverse cultures. Adding some fun and light vibes is key to building trust and closing gaps.

Even though remote work offers flexibility, it might mean never meeting in person. So, you need to embrace this reality. Share backgrounds during informal chats or training sessions to lighten the mood, boost goodwill, and avoid misunderstandings. Bringing in humor and making interactions enjoyable goes a long way in strengthening connections.

In many teams, creative potential isn’t fully unleashed. Often, team members seem to conform to a certain profile, suppressing more unique individual traits. Embracing diversity more openly could elevate more ideas, leading to even better outcomes.

Let's see the five specific areas of challenge, each followed by a practical recommendation based on real-world experience.

Trust

Trust is pivotal in fostering a healthy innovation culture. However, with the lack of face to face time, it’s getting harder and harder to build trust.

Recommendation: Leaders at all levels, including innovation managers, coaches, and team leaders, play a crucial role in motivating and driving innovation. Building trust requires conscious efforts and strategies tailored to the global context. Create fun opportunities for cross-cultural learning. Develop trainings and informal forums for team members to learn about each other's cultures and backgrounds. Use humour and light-heartedness (appropriately) to build rapport. This can help to increase goodwill and reduce tension and misunderstandings.

Leadership

Leadership is not about titles. Everyone in roles like Innovation Manager, Scrum Master, and Designer, is steering (project) teams.

Recommendation: Effective leadership entails understanding diverse perspectives within a multicultural setting. Leaders should adapt their approach to inspire and guide teams, balancing adaptability to diverse cultural and communication styles while maintaining consistency across different locations. Schedule regular check-ins and provide honest feedback and personal development support. Help each other understand the cultural nuances of different teams and adapt your leadership style accordingly.

Collaboration

Even when there’s a healthy level of trust, effective collaboration doesn’t just happen. A lack of ownership of goals or projects as well organization silos make (remote) collaboration even more difficult.

Recommendation: Implement collaborative tools and platforms to bridge geographical gaps.  Enable cohesive global working groups. Over-communicate to ensure that the groups have clear goals and are aligned with higher-level objectives. Give each group the flexibility to agree on their own, common way of working.

Inclusivity

Going beyond accepting cultural differences, the focus should be on celebrating and leveraging these differences to maximize creativity. Encourage team members to share their unique insights, fostering an environment where everyone feels heard and appreciated.

Recommendation: Value diversity (and diversify your innovation portfolio) by encouraging different perspectives. Give autonomy to local teams to run their own events and sponsor their own projects. Support colleagues who want to learn the company’s common language (usually English) but accommodate other languages as much as possible (e.g. instant translation, multilingual leaders).

Communications Infrastructure

A robust communications infrastructure is fundamental to teamwork. Overcoming language barriers and adapting to diverse communication styles are crucial components.

Recommendation: Develop a communication protocol document that outlines agreed guidelines for common communication channels (e.g. Teams, Slack, Email, WhatsApp group), document sharing (e.g. Teams, Dropbox, Google Drive) and language(s) & etiquette (e.g. response times, degree of formality).

Nobody is born with the unique skill set required for global team leadership. Sharing ways of developing these skills openly among team members is crucial. The emphasis is on continuous learning and skill enhancement. And don’t forget- to make this work, embrace the notion that like our innovation work, this is all about iteration.